Scientists at Imperial College London have produced a grim report that Italy is set to be hit with a more deadly second wave of the virus as lockdown is eased.
The scientists modelled in three scenarios how coronavirus will spread, if the country remains in lockdown, if Italians increased their movements by 20% and 40%.
According to the scientific report if just 20% of Italians went about their normal business there will be a much larger surge in deaths which currently stands at 29,079.
If citizens returned to pre-lockdown levels by 40% then Italy could see a death toll of an extra 23,000.
Imperial College said their research highlights the importance for contract tracing apps, wearing mandatory face masks and keeping to strict social distancing.
The Italian government have allowed people to return back to work with parks being reopened, after an explosion in cases in the Lombardy region in March.
The scientists said, “When simulating future scenarios we have not accounted for the impact of social distancing measures in public transport and public space, alongside the mandatory use of personal protective equipment (PPE).
“The cost benefit trade-off between the implementation of new interventions and the relaxation of current NPIs [restrictions] is unknown, and will depend on the effectiveness of this new set of interventions, behaviour, adherence to the recommendations and the correct use of the personal protective equipment.
“Given that interventions, such as extensive testing, contact tracing and social distancing are going to be implemented, our estimates can be viewed as being pessimistic.
“On the other hand, simulating 20% and 40% increase in mobility over the next eight weeks is likely a conservative scenario. Our model uses the official deaths counts to estimate changes in transmission intensity.
“We did not use the reported number of confirmed COVID-19 cases because of potential biases arising from changes in the case definition and testing strategy adopted during the epidemic across the regions, which would be hard to correct for.
“As more information on new interventions are introduced, we will include them in our modelling framework.
“The success of the new interventions such as social distancing on public transports and the use of personal protective equipment depends on population behaviour, adherence to recommendations, the effectiveness and correct use of the equipment as well as on the enhanced and timely monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”
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